


Life on Celluloid

by renquise



Series: Life is pretty mundane, even for elite mercenary teams. [1]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Gen, ridiculous team fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-20
Updated: 2009-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Movie night at the RED base.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life on Celluloid

The chair teeters precariously under Pyro’s feet when he reaches up to tack the other end of the bed sheet, but it holds—the chair’s had a bit of a wobbly leg ever since Scout tried to use it to club Demo over the head, and no one’s gotten around to fixing it yet. Maybe he should put a notice on the billboard. Clambering off the chair, Pyro inspects his work with a huff of satisfaction. The bed sheet droops slightly, and it’s a little stained in the corner, but it’ll probably be okay for a few more screenings before it really starts looking grimy and interfering with the picture. He sighs happily. Pyro really does love movie night—the flickering of the screen, the soft whirr of the projector and the motes of dust floating in the beam of light.

The preliminary arguments always seem to take a long time, though.

“Maggots, what we have here is Sands of Iwo Jima! It’s a damn fine patriotic film, with all the heroism and sheer balls that you ladies are lacking. One and a half goddamn glorious hours of us good ol’ Yanks kickin’ the crap out of people. Almost brings a tear to my eye, it does.”

Demo rolls his eye. “Look ‘ere, Soldier, we all know you ‘ave one of them man-crushes on John Wayne, but that’s no bloody reason to subject us to two hours of mumbly xenophobic shite.”

Scout’s strident voice cuts across the ensuing brawl. “Hey, hey, hey, I wanna watch Creature From The Black Lagoon! None of this frickin’ pussy girl movie bullshit!”

“Are you kidding, mate? Jesus, you almost pissed yourself when we watched The Mummy.”

“Fuck you, ‘s not as if ya weren’t hidin’ behind the sofa, too!”

Pyro makes a hopeful noise, holding up It’s A Wonderful Life.

“Aw, no, not that again!” Scout shouts from the headlock he’s trying to clamp onto Sniper.

Sniper snorts. “Scout doesn’t like that one. Think we’ll try and avoid Scout bursting into tears tonight, eh—“ He gets cut off as Scout makes a strangled noise and leaps onto him in a renewed effort to “shove his freakin’ hat down his throat,” as Scout puts it.

Pyro shrugs, carefully putting the reel back on the shelf. He can watch it later and have the couch all to himself, too.

Spy is being a wet blanket, as always, but that’s only to be expected, really. “Honestly, it is so much to ask for a little culture in our selections? What I wouldn’t give for a little Godard! Ahh, my poor, ignorant colleagues, _that_ is cinema, not your mass-produced Hollywood drivel,” he sighs dramatically, gesturing with his cigarette.

Scout scowls. “I’ve got plenty of freaking culture! I don’t need any Godard!” He pauses. “Ha, that guy’s name kinda sounds like gonads.”

Heavy’s booming voice cuts across the discussion and Spy’s attempted outraged stabbing, quickly settling the matter.

“TONIGHT, WE WATCH GONE WITH WIND.”

Engie looks up from where he’s trying to adjust the projector, which had been bent into something resembling a particularly complicated modern art sculpture during their previous movie night. “Ooh, that’s a good ‘un. Think I’ve got this baby up and runnin’, if y’want to give it a try. I reckon she’ll last through all four hours, with a bit of luck.” He pats the projector fondly. It makes a loud clunk. “Well, maybe two.” One of the reels drops off, rolling neatly across the floor and into Pyro’s gloves. Engineer makes a contemplative noise. “We should be able to get through the credits.”

 

Despite Scout’s best attempts at snatching the reel out of Heavy’s hand and the projector’s sputtering, the movie starts rolling shortly, the MGM lion roaring through the tinny sound system. All of them have crammed onto the flowery sofa with only a little bit of shoving and complaining about Scout’s bony elbows and arguing about who gets to sit on the weird stain and whose fault the stain is and who dropped shotgun shells underneath the cushions and why one end of the sofa is lumpier than the other. Spy had excused himself from the proceedings, claiming that he had better things to do than cuddle with the lot of them.

“Hm, I believe this was a good choice, Heavy. I recall it won several awards, if I remember correctly,” says Medic, moving to sit more comfortably on the couch when they’re all more or less settled.

“Yes, is good movie.” Heavy shifts over slightly, allowing more couch room for Medic, though it causes a domino reaction of “hey!”s down the couch, and Pyro is starting to feel a bit squashed between the arm of the couch and Soldier.

The jury-rigged projector lasts all the way through the credits without bursting into flames, for once, and Engie gives a relieved sigh and stops glancing nervously over his shoulder. Pyro gives him a thumbs-up. Engie had promised him awhile ago to show him how to work the projector, but they haven’t gotten around to it with all the fighting going on. Earlier that month, they had finally been able to fashion a fireproof cabinet for the reels, lining it with asbestos and nestling the movie cases safely inside. There’s a part of him that thinks that the film strips would burn so beautifully, the images flaring up into high shadows and refusing to be quenched, nitrocellulose feeding on its own oxygen in a graceful, violent blaze. The other part of him loves the cowboys and Southern belles and giant gorillas, and doesn’t want them to disappear so quickly.

Sidling back in a few minutes after the opening credits, Spy leans on the back of the sofa in a carefully nonchalant fashion. Neatly slipping his hand into the protective cage that Sniper’s hands form around the bowl of popcorn, he snatches a handful, and it actually takes a few minutes before Sniper twigs on to the fact that the heap of greasy popcorn is steadily decreasing, and that it’s not Scout doing his usual oh-my-god-what-is-THAT-over-there popcorn snatch.

“Will you get your dirty fingers out of my popcorn!”

“But, mon cher, it tastes so much better when you steal it from another’s bowl! You would not deny me that pleasure, would you?” Spy says innocently, twisting his hand out of Sniper’s grip and deftly licking the salt from his glove.

“Damn right, I will. Go get your own damn popcorn, wanker.” Sniper snarls back, narrowing his eyes and making another vain attempt at curling protectively over the bowl.

“And deprive you of my charming company while I go make some? No, no, I simply could not do that. That’s far too cruel, even for me.”

“Mate, you’d best put that handful back unless you think you still do your spyin’ with a few fingers missing.”

“Ah, a few handfuls of popcorn is a small price to pay for the safety of your own trigger finger, non?”

“Sniper, quit hogging the frickin’ popcorn! Geez!”

“Will you get off, you bloody—ergh—clingy—fuckin’ hell, was your mother a spider monkey?”

“Ow! Owowow, geez, stop it, you didn’t have to twist my freakin’ arm off!”

“Argh, you incompetent idiots, you’re getting butter all over the sofa—“

“QUIET. IS GOOD PART.”

Pyro heaves a sigh of relief as the peanut gallery at the end of the sofa quiets down for all of ten seconds, just in time for Clark Gable to make his entrance.

 

Three hours and forty-five minutes later, everyone in the room is fixated by the flickering light projected on the bed sheet, where Scarlett is entreating Rhett not to leave her.

Heavy clutches the handkerchief that Medic had handed to him approximately midway through the film, the delicate fabric tearing a bit under Heavy’s fingers. The way that Heavy pauses every few minutes to loudly blow his nose means that Pyro misses a bit of the dialogue, but that’s okay—he’s gotten pretty good at reading lip movements during previous movie nights when the dialogue’s been drowned out by Scout’s screeching.

“Aye, ye love them and then they leave you, all alone in a bleak, dark world.” Demo sniffs, toying with the umbrella in his drink before taking a long swig of his margarita. “An’ then ye’ve got to make yeself a dress out of th’ living room curtains t’make yourself presentable, and it’s damn tragic, but damn, if ye aren’t going to be fabulous-looking when ye’re down and out.” Demo nods sagely.

Pyro nods, too. He liked Scarlett’s curtain dress.

“Ain’t that what happens in Sound of Music?” Scout’s voice is a little thick, and he seems to be trying to discreetly wipe his nose on Sniper’s shirt, but Pyro doesn’t say anything about it, because he wants to know what happens next.

“Naw, she makes outfits for the kids in Sound of Music.” Oh, Sniper’s not commenting on the snot trail on his shoulder because he’s trying to keep Spy from remarking that his sunglasses are getting a bit misty. Not that Spy’s going to notice, Pyro thinks, with the way his eyes are glued to the movie, his cigarette hanging limply from his mouth and threatening to drop into the last of the popcorn kernels.

Soldier keeps a stiff upper lip, of course, though you could say that his lower lip is quivering a bit—if there wasn’t the strong possibility of painful consequences, of course. “Damn pussy love stories.” Engie silently hands him a handkerchief, eyes fixed on the screen, watching Scarlett proclaim that she’ll go home, home, home.

Pyro loves movie nights.


End file.
